Alfonso Aguilar shouts into the mike, gesticulating wildly to no one in particular on a recent Saturday morning. He is taping his radio show, which is recorded in the District and beamed into nine cities, including Houston, Chicago and Miami.

News has broken that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney blames his election loss in part on “gifts” President Obama gave Hispanics and other minorities.

“He thinks Latinos voted for entitlements,” he tells listeners in Spanish. “Mr. Romney, Latinos didn’t vote for President Obama because they liked Obamacare. No, they voted for Obama because of your stance on immigration. In the primary, you moved to the far right.”

Not the kind of talk you’d expect from a committed Republican, a guy who stumped for Romney and whose employer ponied up $400,000 in anti-Obama campaign ads that focused on the administration’s record deportation rates. It’s a set of curiosities not lost on a caller from Los Angeles.

“How could you have supported him at all?” Francisco wants to know.

“I’m a conservative,” Aguilar responds.

But not just any conservative. Aguilar is a 43-year-old Puerto Rican-born former official in the George W. Bush administration; an opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage; a supporter of free markets and limited government. But on immigration, he has differed sharply with his party’s orthodoxy, unapologetically embracing comprehensive reform, including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

With Obama promising to push immigration reform early in his second term, Aguilar is poised to be a driving force in the debate, helping to shape how Republicans respond to an issue of paramount importance to about 12.5 million Latino voters — a growing segment of the electorate that has continued to skew Democratic. In many ways, Aguilar already is a pivotal presence.

Jorge Ramos [see photo], a Univision anchor and the most influential Spanish-language journalist in the United States, sent a tweet to his 626,400 followers recently that could very well help define the next stage of Aguilar’s career. “Republicans you have to listen to for the immigration debate: Jeb Bush, [former commerce secretary] Carlos Gutierrez and Alfonso Aguilar.”

On the ego wall of his small K Street office, Aguilar has hung photos of himself with Pope John Paul II, former vice president Richard B. Cheney and a former governor of Puerto Rico, and a group shot of all the Hispanic political appointees in the Bush administration. Aguilar and the other Latino bureaucrats fill multiple rows, stretching along the entire facade of the White House.

To make it from Spanish-language radio to Spanish-language TV, I think he needs a mustache.

48 comments:

Anonymous
said...

A bizarre meme is spreading among the left that Republican voters disproportionally life off welfare. I guess the psychological appeal of this myth is that it makes Republicans out to be both losers and hypocrites at the same time. As a bonus, the myth allows Democrats to demand more tax payers dollars for themselves without feeling guilty about it.

Perhaps this notion appears plausible because of geographic voting patters. Poor states vote for Republicans while rich states vote Democrats. We know however from Gelman's Paradox that this is misleading. States don’t vote, individuals do. Though poorer states vote Republican, within states the pattern is the opposite: poorer individuals vote Democrat. It is low-income Democrat voters who are dragging down the Red State average, while high-income Republicans in Blue States raise their average.

For example look at the CBS-News exit poll by family income:

President Obama won voters earning less than 30k by 63-35 percent, while Romney won voters earning more than 250k by 55-42 percent. Romney won every income group making more than 50 000 dollars. If you are a Democrat residing in the “reality based community”, which of these two groups do you think is more likely to receive welfare? Doesn't it require an extra dose of double-think to hate Republicans simultaneous for being welfare-cases and greedy rich one percenters?

Don't you just love the Orwellian euphemism "Immigration Reform"? All that "Immigration Reform" actually consists of is putting an offical "Come one, come all!" stamp on the illegal immivasion-colonization status quo - it's nothing more than a means to relieve our elect - our hypocrats - from having to enforce existing immigration law.

Don't try to hold your breath while you wait for Media-Pravda to point out this de facto treachery.

Without reading, I'm sure it could be summed up as "I'm half Asian, and half Jewish, and both halves of me hate, despise, and look down upon the white Americans who founded this country and made it a place my ancestors wanted to move to."

It'd be nice if all these Dark Enlightenment bloggers with ready access to a willing audience maybe crystalized an opposition to the forces trying to create a new electorate of the forever dependent.

Or they could go on arguing about whether Dark Enlightenment the right name for themselves, or posting woe is me articles about how the Republicans are fucking up but hey don't ask me to actually do something about it.

"Am I the only person who is utterly stunned by how quickly and completely so-called "conservatives" have folded after losing to Obama?"

No. I'm pretty puzzled as well by this total air of panic and desperation that seems to hang over all so-called mainstream GOP outlets, think-tanks, and commentators.

My best guess is that these people convinced themselves that Obama would not only lose, but lose in a landslide. I blame Romney's somewhat impressive debate performance for that. They deluded themselves into thinking their candidate was stronger than he was, and that the electorate was friendlier to the party than it was. Now that Obama won, they're trying to explain it away with simplistic answers that don't get to the root of their problems.

"When Dubya was re-elected in 2004, I don't seem to remember redneck liberal consultants coming out of the woodwork advising the Democrats to throw minorities, immigrants, women and gays under the bus."

Great, another conservative who is completely ignorant of the existence of the Democratic Leadership Council or indeed the entire Democratic national strategy between the McGovern defeat and Obama's election.

Speaking of appropriation, instead of a dark enlightenment which sounds a little too emo for my taste, why not adopt the mantle of counter revolutionary? it is both historically accurate and shows what the enemy truly is.

"Without reading, I'm sure it could be summed up as 'I'm half Asian, and half Jewish, and both halves of me hate, despise, and look down upon the white Americans who founded this country and made it a place my ancestors wanted to move to.'"

Actually, it focused more on sexual issues. Whiskey would feel vindicated if he read it.

In Sweden in 2010, the left got 77 percent of the vote of non-European immigrants in a year when only 43 percent of native born Swedes voted for the left. This is not explained with immigration policy; in Sweden the right has consistently favored higher levels of immigration than Social Democrats. Non-European immigrants are the fastest growing population group in Sweden.

In U.K in 2010, 68 percent of ethnic minorities voted for Labor while only 31 percent of White British voted for Labor.

In 2009 in Germany 84 percent of Turkish immigrants voted for the left in a year when only 39 percent of native born Germans voted for the left.

The explanation for this strong tendency are fairly simple.

First, it is not in the material self-interests of poor people to vote for the party of low taxes and limited government.

This is from a moderate libertarian swede, that immirgants minorities always vote for the left.

Second, people don’t only vote based on self-interests, they vote based on group-interest. Many middle-class minorities from low-income ethnic groups vote for the left because of group solidarity.

Is it just me or does the last paragraph of this excerpt sound out place with the boilerplate upon of it sounds like maybe the writer is not so for amnesty and all the rest. For install s, ego wall, Hispanic appointees, belittling him, etc.

But not just any conservative. Aguilar is a 43-year-old Puerto Rican-born former official in the George W. Bush administration; an opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage; a supporter of free markets and limited government.

No, he's not a supporter of "limited covernment". Immigrants are brought here to become part of the government -- to make it stronger.

OT, but here's a possible blog post topic:Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memoReform of intellectual properties laws would be a very popular undertaking, and a way for the republican party to set itself apart from the Democrats. The republican party will do anything for money and elite approval, but it won't do anything for actual votes. Just one more reason why the republican party needs to die.

Isn't this con game just what the Spanish Conquistadors did in Mexico? Kill all the Aztecs, impregnate their widows and declare everybody "Mestizio" (with the white Spanish "Mestizios" on top of course, and the browner you are the further down the ladder you go...)

GOP should shame the Dems for appealing to blacks and browns with bribes and special favors--at the expense of underprivileged whites--than with equality and legality.

Legality and equality VS illegality and bribery. That is how it should be framed.

Do not focus on browns but on elite Jews and liberal whites who exploit brown resentment at the expense of non-privileged whites. Browns are not leading with this issue. They are following the policy set by elite liberals. Then, attack the elite liberals for playing dirty politics to win over easy votes. Don't focus on browns. Go for the head shot.

The self-styled 'hispanic leaders' all seem to have a few characteristics in common. - They tend to be physically big men, with lots of dark hair, pure Castilian ancestry, sometimes moustachieod, an imposing well groomed demeanour and basically the phenotype of a 'don' or 'grandee' from old Spain. You know the type well educated, well spoken, cultured, firecely right wing and catholic and having 'good Iberian features'. You can almost imagine them surveying their estates on horseback wearing a black leather wide brimmed hat. And these men have 'emerged' as the 'natural leaders' of the little dark people who for some reason cannot find their own voice or spokespeople. Perhaps the little dark people still fawn over the grandees in a master/servant realtionship.

No. I'm pretty puzzled as well by this total air of panic and desperation that seems to hang over all so-called mainstream GOP outlets, think-tanks, and commentators.

Surely this is another step on the road caused by PC, by fear of racism? The whole purpose of those concepts is to rule whole areas of debate as beyond the pale and anyone trying to analyze an election while adhering to the acceptable limits of debate cannot analyze the election - simple as that.

Its like a crossword solution that leaves out every 'e', that in fact never acknowledges that the letter 'e' even exists.

Im sure its all quite intentional. Twenty years ago it just seemed absurd but now its come down to the wire and one of the real purposes of PC speak has finally begun to sink in. Have enough people noticed though? I guess not.

[QUOTE] “Mr. Romney, Latinos didn’t vote for President Obama because they liked Obamacare. No, they voted for Obama because of your stance on immigration. In the primary, you moved to the far right.”[/QUOTE]

That is a bunch of bull crap. All polls about this topic reveals that most Latinos do indeed support Obamacare.

Most Latinos are not fiscal conservatives who believe government spends too much money.

If Latinos were such a right wing demographic, there would not be so many people in the Latino community who worship Che Guevara and wear his t-shirt.

I see Latinos here in California all of the time wearing t-shirts with left wing messages praising communist Che Guevara as well as praising racial tribalism like La Raza and Brown Pride.

You have to be on crack if you think these people are considered "natural Republicans".

You're on to something here. On rare occasions, I need or want to look more stereotypically Hispanic so I make sure to get a few sessions in the tanning salon in. My natural skin tone is probably around the Iberian average, which is much paler than most Americans think.

So now the "far right" on immigration believes we need more immigrants in some fields, that people should work through the system, and that we should find a way to let the people who have already broken in stay?

Funny, I would've thought the "far right" would want to deport every illegal, levy massive fines on their employers, make all social benefits off-limits to illegals, take diplomatic and trade action against countries that encourage their citizens to come here illegally, build a serious fence on the border manned with armed agents, eliminate chain migration, pass English-only laws for government offices and paperwork, and put a moratorium on future immigration until all these tasks have been completed and the unemployment rate has dropped and wages have started to rise naturally.

That's actually an interesting link, in that the post is a concise refutation of both IQ absolutism and the educational methods of our alleged meritocratic class. It's as fine a sample of a conformist mind, propagandized to a fare-thee-well, and beautifully trained in un-think, as could be found in the most protein-deprived religious cult member.

Yes, I know she's young, but she is an adult, and an adult who's supposed to have had the best training of the intellect, and exposure to high culture, as the world has to offer. I've met local college kids whose "culture" consists of binge-drinking and football who have more thoughtful and informed views.

The ones your referring in California have a chip on their shoulder, many of these Mexicans are not that bad with the english language but they prefer Mexican actvistism. They actually know that bringing in more lower skilled folks from the old country hurts the Mexicans already here but they want their numbers to be higher than whites.

Consider how many Central and SOuth American "Latinos" I have metwith such unlikely sounding names as Vladimir Benitez and Anatoly Sanchez. They were named after Soviet Communist heroes of their parents. Communism is VERY popular amongst a broad swath of mestizoes and mulattoes and indios in the Hispanophone nations south of Mexico, and in parts of Mexico, simply because the Soviets were the main enemy of the gringo back then. It was anti-Americanism pure and simple. So why let such a people in?

“Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding ‘more’ while never defining ‘enough.’ The predictable result is that they always get more, and it’s never enough.”

"Leftists love pointing out that Mississippi has the lowest average IQ, soaks up lots of welfare, and consistently votes Republican. They know that respectable conservatives will never point out that it's 37% Black."

I don't mind pointing that out, but then I'm not a "respectable conservative."

You can go around race, though, by just pointing to exit polling data. In Mississippi in 2008, 66% of those earning under $30,000/year voted for Obama. In Georgia it was 70%. Nationwide, the Republican share of the vote increases with level of education up to but excluding graduate school.

Well, its a bit funny since now the left in their poverty measure has California and Washington DC as the poorest since they want to give moe welfare there. The new measure has Mississippi at 15 percent poverty since offically Blacks are able to receive welfare than illegal latinos or asians. Also, cost of housing is factored in. Both Texas which drops form 18 percent to 16.8 and New York which I have not seen the figure have higher poverty in the new measure than Mississippi.

“Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding ‘more’ while never defining ‘enough.’ The predictable result is that they always get more, and it’s never enough.”

Their ostensible goal is equality of outcomes, based on the delusion of human equality.

I guess whether it's feature or bug that their goal is unattainable, and a license for perpetual social engineering, depends on your "who-whom?"

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